Russ Crawford: IFAF’s European Women’s Flag Football Championship opens Thursday September 25
Nineteen women’s teams will vie for the European Flag Football Championship in Choisy-le-Roi, France starting September 25. The competitors include the Austrian women, who, in 2024, were ranked 4th in the world by IFAF, making them the top-rated team in the field. They are joined by number 5 Great Britain, whose women won the championship in 2023 by defeating number 7 Spain 26-19. Number 8 Germany and number 10 Italy round out the top ten, with France one spot back at number 11. Filling the remaining spots are Czechia (14), along with Switzerland, Israel, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Ireland, who are ranked from 16-21. Number 24 Poland, 30 Ukraine, plus unranked Netherlands and Norway complete the teams contending for the championship.
Czechia v. Finland, Austria v. The Netherlands, Great Britain v. Ukraine, Switzerland v. Israel, Spain v. Poland, France v. Sweden, and Germany v. Ireland kickoff the women’s side at 9:15 local time. All games will be played at the Parc Interdépartemental de Choisy Paris-Val-de-Marne in the southern suburbs of Paris.
The European championship follows the recent Americas championship that IFAF held in conjunction with the American Football Federation of Panama, which saw Mexico defeat Canada 12-0 in the final, with the United States coming in 3rd, and Panama 4th. The Nigerian women won the first-ever IFAF African Continental Championship by defeating Morocco 26-12, and the last teams to earn an invitation to the IFAF Women’s World Flag Championship will be chosen when IFAF holds their Asia-Oceania Flag Football Championships in Ningbo, China from October 23-27.
These continental championship top finishers will then gather in Düsseldorf, Germany from August 13-16, 2026 to decide which teams will play in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Those games will culminate a decades long IFAF effort to include flag football in the Olympic Games.
In a September 16, 2025 press release, IFAF President Pierre Trochet stated the following:
“IFAF Euro Flag is an unmissable opportunity for French sports fans to discover elite flag football and find out why it is one of the fastest-growing and most exciting sports on the planet! We’re bringing that Olympic fever back to Paris with the chance to cheer on Les Bleus on the road to Los Angeles 2028 – and to meet stars who will capture the world’s imagination in just three years’ time!”
